Can't hold on much longer

Because death would've been too merciful.

If the next-gen Sonic games fail to deliver, will you still remain interested in the series?

Poll ended at Mon May 22, 2006 8:28 am

No. There are only so many disappointments I can take
10
20%
Provided the new games get enough right, I’ll be willing to give Sonic another chance
21
41%
No matter how bad things get, I’ll always remain devoted
20
39%
 
Total votes: 51

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big_smile
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Can't hold on much longer

Post by big_smile »

Ever since Sonic & Knuckles, the Sonic series has been gradually sliding down a one way track and it isn’t clear how long this will last. It’s difficult to hold on much longer, but as fans we’re supposed to never let go. If the hedgehog fails again, will you still be able to open up your heart to him, or will his failures no longer be all right?

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Post by Tsuyoshi-kun »

I honestly think I won't ever be able to fully part with the Sonic series (I just bought Sonic Riders yesterday, even). It will be fun again, it will one day retain the glory it hasn't had since Sonic Adventure. This is why I stil continue to support SEGA, for with all of the recent screw-ups, it must mean that ONE of the next games will get it right. It happened before in the mid-90s, (with all those bad Game Gar games and spin-offs, and then a first years later came Sonic Adventure), and it can happen again.

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Post by G.Silver »

This whole "OMG Sonic you suck we are breaking up forever!" thing is completely retarded. The only way for it to work is if you choose to stop paying attention altogether, which is probably something no one with a keen interest in video games is really capable of doing. When another game comes along, and it turns out it's one that you DO like, you'd be stupid to miss it, right?

Giving the games "a chance" (at least to the extent of looking to see if it interests you, no one is going to force you to buy it) is such an insignificant activity that it amounts to nothing--there is no risk to you, there is a minimal time investment required to take a look. If you are even remotely jaded (no one at the GHZ should have a problem) then I think you can guard your hopes closely enough to not be absolutely devestated when it turns out to suck again.

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Post by Double-S- »

I haven't played a Sonic game since Sonic Adventure 2.

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Post by Professor Machenstein »

I have no idea what I would do if SONIC the Hedgehog fails. I am still deciding whether or not if SONIC the Hedgehog is the "last chance" for the series. Another thing I like about Sonic is that he is persistent. Compare, Bubsy and all the other 16-BIT hasbeens who tried to go 3D and failed. They all kicked the damn bucket right after their first 3D outing. But Sonic is a whole other tale. After one decent 3D outing followed by several mediocre-to-awful 3D titles and the series is still going. I am surprised Sonic has not received the Alex Kidd treatment yet and is scrapped in favor of another character. Well, that was almost the case when SEGA created Ristar, then NiGHTS, but whatever. Point is, I am deciding whether I should persist with Sonic and just drop the whole "hope and prosperity" game altogether.

Another thing that worries me is the whole "like the classics" philosophy. The mentality that all Sonic games must have checkered walls, flickies, zany insect robots, the name Robotnik (American fans stress that one), and everything pre-1998 in order to be good. I find it untrue. It is okay to stay within your roots, but for your selling point to be "like the classics" is just not right. What should be the selling point is fun. Nothing more.

That said, Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog suck. No amount of classic Sonic could save them. They were both poorly designed games with terrible dialogue and undesired gameplay styles. The same almost goes for Sonic Adventure 2 if it were not for the Sonic and Shadow stages and even they were overly linear.

I do not care if SONIC the Hedgehog is not like the classics. Sure, SEGA lied about the whole "back to the roots" thing, that was disappointing, but it is nothing to dismiss the game over. We already know, on a technical standpoint anyway, that the game looks very, very pretty. Now that we know the game looks good, will it play good? Because that is all that is required. To look good, to play good. Nothing more.

That is how I feel about the series of now.

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Post by jenkins »

I'll always be a Sonic fan, even if there is never another good game, simply because I can get so much fun out of the old games. They're gems which will never lose their shine.

That said, I daresay that Sonic will eventually get back on its feet. We've had so many near misses, so many good ideas that were poorly executed, and so many successes in the series' early past that surely Sonic will get back on his feet again. I can't make any guess as to how long it will be, but maybe when people who grew up with Sonic can have more influence and maybe even get design chief status on some future Sonic game. We'll just have to see.

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Point of No Return

Post by Zarathustra »

I'm considering to make a clearly visible "before 1994 / after 1994" break point for the Sonic games, since being a fan of the former is almost being a revolutionary, and being fan of the latter is being a fan of some commercially successful videogame and TV furry, that's it.

I personally voted the second option since Sonic is no more the same as before 1997, and anyone who wants to take him again where he once was will need more than God's power and the best of luck, since the 2D formula is so fucking hard to translate to a 3D landscape.

I'm gonna give a chance to EVERY Sonic game, at least to know why I hate it, since there can be a chance of a game that I don't really hate, but only by taking a look. But, they'll be after 1994 Sonic games, so I'll take that in mind.

Also:
Professor Machenstein wrote:I am surprised Sonic has not received the Alex Kidd treatment yet and is scrapped in favor of another character. Well, that was almost the case when SEGA created Ristar, then NiGHTS, but whatever.
Alex Kidd was a generic and weak concept, Bubsy was a fucking flawed platformer, and Ristar was a Genesis-era ender 1995 game, probably didn't do that well economically speaking... and it's gameplay was very limited, if anyone wanted to do a 3D version, they would need to change almost the entire game mechanics for it to work. It's artistical values made it an immediate classic.

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Post by Senbei »

Edit: complaint withdrawn.

The reason for my devotion to the Sonic series is similar to that of my devotion to Archie Sonic. Four fifths of the comics are crap, but that one fifth is something special and truly entertaining, enough so that putting up with the rest isn't so bad.
Last edited by Senbei on Mon May 15, 2006 10:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Point of No Return

Post by Arcade »

Zarathustra wrote:I'm considering to make a clearly visible "before 1994 / after 1994" break point for the Sonic games, since being a fan of the former is almost being a revolutionary, and being fan of the latter is being a fan of some commercially successful videogame and TV furry, that's it.

I personally voted the second option since Sonic is no more the same as before 1997, and anyone who wants to take him again where he once was will need more than God's power and the best of luck, since the 2D formula is so fucking hard to translate to a 3D landscape.

I'm gonna give a chance to EVERY Sonic game, at least to know why I hate it, since there can be a chance of a game that I don't really hate, but only by taking a look. But, they'll be after 1994 Sonic games, so I'll take that in mind.

Also:
Professor Machenstein wrote:I am surprised Sonic has not received the Alex Kidd treatment yet and is scrapped in favor of another character. Well, that was almost the case when SEGA created Ristar, then NiGHTS, but whatever.
Alex Kidd was a generic and weak concept, Bubsy was a fucking flawed platformer, and Ristar was a Genesis-era ender 1995 game, probably didn't do that well economically speaking... and it's gameplay was very limited, if anyone wanted to do a 3D version, they would need to change almost the entire game mechanics for it to work. It's artistical values made it an immediate classic.
Mario is also a generic; it just came earlier, what really killed Alex was that all his games minus two sucked. “Alex Kidd in high tech worldâ€￾ had a time limit that made the game suck, the arcade game didn’t have enough objects to pick and throw and the Genesis game overused the Yankendo so much it made you hate the game. Only his first game (Alex kidd in miracle world) and his last game (Alex kidd in shinobi would) where good.

PS: ON a totally unrelevant question, what killed Wonderboy? his games didnt sucked like most of the Alex Kidd ones.

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Post by FlashTHD »

I don't know when I first liked Sonic; my mom claims I was four when that happened (my recollection of anything before I was five is more than spotty). The funny thing is, I didn't like him for the games - I had no idea those even existed at the time. Sonic was just awesome for some reason and I stuck with him, even through only the shitty Archie comic long after the cartoons went off the air.

To this day, I maintain that Sonic is awesome. Characters do not get much better than him, and you have to owe some respect to the guy since he's now been kicking for nearly 15 years. Yes, there has unquestionably been a decline in game quality compared to the days of Genesis vs. Super NES, but nothing - nothing - that would kill the series in one shot or otherwise wear it down painfully. All of the 3D games have maintained at least a decent quality level, SA2 being the best of them in my book. The Advance games and Rush can be mostly forgiven since Sega had the no-names at Dimps craft them. I hate the new kiddy image, but look here, Sonic Team's making a new game that SoA won't market to 10-year-olds only. For Sonic Next to single-handedly bring the whole franchise crashing down, it'd have to do something outrageous and unforgiveable enough to make all this effort for naught. Shadow in a jeep firing rockets is certainly fucked up and may hurt the game a good bit, but they'll have to do worse than that to turn me off altogether.

Machenstein owned it. There are some things you don't need to stress over. It's kind of hurtful that Nakamura doesn't completely know what he's talking about when he goes on about returning to "the roots", but it's not necessarily going to doom the game if they get it right. You want "the roots"? That's what Sonic's part of the game is for. His game from SA1 is about as close to it as you can get in 3D. I'm cool with Silver's different gameplay style so long as they keep the pace of his game going at a decent clip and they realize that stopping all the time to do telekinetic tricks is dumb. Shadow...ehh, lots of work to be done there. It's the roots as much as it is different - they tried that in SA1, and i'm holding it to them to do "different" right this time.

What i'm not holding them to do is "restore the series' glory" or remove all the bottomless pits or anything like that. I don't set my expectations for any game that high. I want a game that's fun and well-made. If they don't deliver, then I don't consider this game important enough to be the make-or-break point. Big, but not critical.

I will say this much: I have little to no enthusiasm for Rivals and Wild Fire. Rivals is a game i'll never play due to lack of PSP, but it still sounds like a shitty idea from an un-proven, shitty developer. Wild Fire is, as I understand it, an on-rails platformer - remember Bug!, anyone? It could also be called NiGHTS with the cool parts sucked out. I don't see how it's garnering so much positive attention. Where am I going with this? The last time two ill-concieved Sonic games like that were announced and released in close proximity was 1995 (or to a lesser extent, 2003). Most of the other recent releases have made some lick of sense in ther core concepts.

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Post by Frieza2000 »

Since I was one of the forerunners of the whole "abandon ship" drama, I guess I should say something. I'll try to make it the last time I bother you with my personal feelings about Sonic.

Edit: I'm gonna sum up everything I had here before with less emo. Basically, Sonic's always been more about the characters and story to me than the game mechanics. They're important, but when I say I'm dropping the series I mean I no longer care about what happens to it. Guns? Great. New characters? Cool. Anal sex? Congratulations.

The new stuff has a distinctly different feel to it. It's not that it's a horrible feel, but it's at odds with everything that came before and on its own it isn't impressive enough to merit any more of my attention than any other work. And while the gameplay could potentially turn on a dime it looks like Sonic Team has decided that it likes the new attitude of everything else. Even the next gen game bears hints of the same juvenile tripe, so I don't expect to ever enjoy it like I used to. If they start making good games again I'll probably play them, but they won't be Sonic games to me. I'm happy with that. I really cared too much about this.
Last edited by Frieza2000 on Mon May 15, 2006 7:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Point of No Return

Post by Zarathustra »

Arcade wrote:PS: ON a totally unrelevant question, what killed Wonderboy? his games didnt sucked like most of the Alex Kidd ones.
There was some legal issues with it's license, actually Wonder Boy is NOT from SEGA, it's from Escape. More info at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Boy.

Since everyone is talking about his/ her first contact with Sonic, I should comment that mine was around 1994 (obviously I saw him way before that, but I didn't care), it was an ad on an Archie Comic my dad gave me when he returned from Miami... I should also say I was living in Mexico in that moment. It was relatively appealing.

The second big moment was when some school kids told me about it and "how the fuck didn't you play it, OMG!". It was quite infamous for it's speed, and since in that moment (1995, if I remember) I simply sucked at videogames, I tried not to play it cause I was afraid it would result much frustrating. Finally, one trusty day, I decided to rent the first one... well, and then I'm here, the rest's pretty obvious, I think.

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Post by Light Speed »

I agree with G. Silver, since I really haven't cared about Sonic since Heroes came out. It was the last Sonic game I have played, but I still post at the GHZ because I like video games. I probably spend more time reading about video games and the industry nowadays than I actually do playing games, so I know about Sonic games whether or not I choose to play them. I will never not know about what is going on in the Sonic Universe, but I am way past the whole buying anything with the Sonic Team logo on it phase.

I also agree with Machenstein that being classic doesn't really matter. The gameplay in Mario 64 was totally different, the reason being is they had to change it for 3D. They just made good changes.

I will probably buy this new Sonic 2006 just because the Sonic levels look fun. I do consider myself over Sonic though. I'll never shun a video game series as a whole though.

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Post by Professor Machenstein »

After reading Frieza's thoughts, I just remembered another element in games which is very fundamental to create a truly enjoyable experience; immersion. The way the world is presented, the interesting cast of characters, the atmosphere, a narrative that creates a bond between you and this grand world you just discovered. The whole concept of Sonic the Hedgehog was just so cool and surreal, it was not a thing like reality. That, overall, is what made Sonic cool.

That said, I look forward to seeing how SONIC the Hedgehog fares in the immersion department. It has a strange RPG setting, it has a city of water, a princess, a demon entity, detailed landscapes, and to mix with that, a blue hedgehog and a scary looking Eggman. You have Town Stages to interact with all sorts of different personas and different shops to purchase stuff with your rings with. You have psychic powers and time travelling. While the older games were bizarre in a BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo kind of way, this particular game is strange on a level that can only be accomplished if pirates and ninjas were battling Mecha Godzilla on the Moon. It's weird, but maybe weird enough to become immersive in a kind of way.

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Post by Arcade »

My first contact with Sonic was a lame cartoon with a moral at the end of every episode, and Tails was a girl in it, at least in the Spanish version. The only good thing was that the first season was funny and it introduced the concept of Tails being a small genius.

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Post by Zarathustra »

It was the same as I (well, the "true" 2nd contact). And there were only 4 Chaos Emeralds, and if you took away Sonic's sneakers he won't be able to run since he would put his feet on fire. "Estoy esperaaaandoo...".

EDIT: Tails' voice was fucking sexy, while Sonic X's Tails' spanish voice is retarded... and now he's a boy... I'm confused -@_@-.

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Post by Arcade »

Zarathustra wrote:It was the same as I (well, the "true" 2nd contact). And there were only 4 Chaos Emeralds, and if you took away Sonic's sneakers he won't be able to run since he would put his feet on fire. "Estoy esperaaaandoo...".

EDIT: Tails' voice was fucking sexy, while Sonic X's Tails' spanish voice is retarded... and now he's a boy... I'm confused -@_@-.
You are lucky GHZ doesn’t have that Sonic 2 official “ color mangaâ€￾ anymore or you will be even more confused.

Since that cartoon was started in production before Sonic 2 was released, they only got very basic information of tails, probably just a video of some game footage, and scenes where Tails is flying after Sonic, what he did a lot in the cartoon.

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Post by Zarathustra »

I don't know, supossedly fox is male and vixen is female, so:
1) The DiC staff used Miles "Tails" Prower the Vixen, or
2) The translators team though fox is both male and female, or they simply wanted to add some pervert content to the show.

And I'm afraid someone has showed me that manga before, but I'm not sure if it's the same one.

EDIT: I officially announce this topic as driven off-topic.

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Post by Majestic Joey »

One time I was playing sonic rush in the hallways in my school and this cute girl comes up to me with her DS and asks what I'm playing. I reply, "Sonic rush" and then she says, "oh, I like mario more." I then say,"Fuck you. Sonic kicks the fuck out of mario." and then she left. That's how loyal of a sonic fan I am.

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Post by Segaholic2 »

That's the greatest story ever.

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Post by Ngangbius »

You turned down a real, attractive girl in favor of an imaginary video game character?

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Post by Zarathustra »

Majestic Joey wrote:"Fuck you. Sonic kicks the fuck out of mario."
Truth sometimes hurts. :)

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Post by j-man »

Ngangbius wrote:You turned down a real, attractive girl in favor of an imaginary video game character?
Videogames over girls any day. Even Shadow The Hedgehog didn't hurt as bad as some of the shit I've put up with from the "fairer" sex.

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Post by Majestic Joey »

Ngangbius wrote:You turned down a real, attractive girl in favor of an imaginary video game character?
HELLZ YEAH!

Also she was decently pretty not gorgeous.

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Post by Ngangbius »

So, like would you turn down sex with Monica Bellucci even if she said Sonic sucks ass?

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